


He who makes a beast out of himself

by signalbeam



Category: Gunnerkrigg Court
Genre: Forced Intimacy, Gen, Strong Non-Con Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signalbeam/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After leaving Annie with the dryads, Ysengrin goes to meet Coyote. Post chapter 31.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He who makes a beast out of himself

**Author's Note:**

> Tagging is hard.

He left the girl with the dryads, and then left her. Not a trespasser, but a girl who had yet to learn how to not let her weaknesses master her. The Wandering Eye should not have chastised her for running into the forest—or had she forgotten the matter of her creation and the greed of her man-like god, dropping her down that well in exchange for knowledge he should have already had? The night at the bottom of that hole must have been unfathomably dark. Even thinking made Ysengrin curl his toes. His claws scraped on the inside of the armor, and distantly, another set of toes dug into the soft, decaying ground below. 

He was on his way back to Coyote’s clearing, though he doubted Coyote would come to meet him. Coyote was a busy god, tasked with fetching the sun in the morning, chewing the flesh from moon during the day, keeping the sky from falling down on the earth; always a busy god, yet always having time for the fire-head girl. Let him go to her, he told himself, careful to not be resentful. It was the rightful order of things. He had his gifts, and his dominion. More, already, than some could dream of. More than he had dreamed of when he was young, nothing more than a wolf chasing after foxes and wandering the green and brown fields without seeing the heavy spirits living in the trees or the one living in him. 

It was when the moon had risen that he noticed Coyote. The wood in his body pulled towards the sky, and the stars slithered apart to make way for their god. The top of his trees bent away from their roots. What did Coyote want from him—not knowledge, not power, not aid. No, Coyote wanted nothing from him, except to humiliate him and to eek one more of his awing laughs. Everything now laughed: his footsteps, the molecular space between specks of dirt, the teeth-like pricks of light from the stars— 

“Everything but you!” said Coyote, his feet now touching the top of the trees and his enormous neck twisting to watch Ysengrin. Ysengrin did not look up, but instead advanced forward. “What an exciting day! Why don’t you look happier, Ysengrin?” 

“It was a fine day,” he said stiffly, and now the shadows on the trees grew faces and laughed and laughed. 

“Even you didn’t know about the fire in that girl,” said Coyote. “Now that she knows—!” His legs elongated, the hard caps of his claws making the earth howl wildly with mirth. His body looped endlessly around the branches and the leaves, and slowly formed itself again beside Ysengrin. “What an interesting twist! Why, I never would’ve seen it, if I hadn’t been there myself! Look at how it complicates things.” He waited, preening with his hundred eyes. 

“Yes," he said, tired. "You've thoroughly tangled her allegiances.” 

Coyote’s eyes rolled, all over his body. “But now she seems much more palatable, doesn’t she,” Coyote said. “Good, good! I always knew you’d take a liking to fire head. You make her seem lively and fun-loving! You boring old coot.” 

“She had your blessing,” Ysengrin said. “So I have always—” 

“Oh, liar! Liar, liar,” said Coyote, sweeping away Ysengrin’s words with his tail. And indeed, the sentence had vanished, leaving only an irritating blank in his head where an idea should have been. “Tell me what a clever little figment I am, and how powerful. Did you know there are some places where they call me Cat? Because I seem to them to be a cat! How delightful!” Coyote swirled around Ysengrin’s body, thin shadows seeping through the wooden armor and into Ysengrin’s skin. But how could this ugly, shriveled thing be him? He felt the press of a tiny, unfathomable paw against his stomach, and his realer body felt too small to contain him. Bodies within bodies, body pushing body, body sapping life from body; Coyote worming between these bodies, and his head emerging flat next to Ysengrin’s. “So what do you really think of fire head? Not so close to human anymore, is she? But you’re wrong. Stupid old dog.” 

_Endure_ , he told himself, he must endure—but Coyote grinned with his flat teeth, and wiggled around him. Little better than those dumb men copulating in the dark, blind to etheric form and spirit, pistoning like machines, little better than those crude animals fornicating with hormonal flush, little more than little and small. He pushed back, helpless, and the sky roared in mockery; his body crossed, and tangled, and fell into the lake. 

“Poor Ysengrin!” said Coyote to no one, and bit at Ysengrin’s neck. Ysengrin whined and squirmed, but there was no room for him, not when Coyote was becoming solid and large. He had to get out, but Coyote was stomping on him, thousands of paws on each bone and millions on every hair. The wood splintered, and Coyote erupted back into form, weighted and three dimensional, onto the grass. Slowly, Ysengrin turned over, and then stood again. 

“This will be another story, yes?” Coyote said, already winding back into the sky. “Something to tell the villagers when they are misbehaving!” 

His tail, studded with eyes and stars, curled around Ysengrin’s trunk, then spiraled away. 

“I,” he said, "will relay that to them," but Coyote had already sighed away the clouds and stepped off to the stars, leaving Ysengrin forgotten below him. It was the way things should be, but now the words chafed at him, pressing with deadly pressure around his neck. He settled into himself again, and then tried again, but there was too much of him inside his body, or not enough of it, too much to fit inside his armor but not enough to step out, to serve was to be humbled, to serve was to be eaten away, flesh vanishing down the gullet of the poisoned gift, and they were all dogs, no better than dogs. Should not have been like this, should have stayed away, unloyal and unswayed. He trembled with miniature and futile fury—flowers blowing into blossom, trees exploding into bloom, and then withering so fast he might have mistaken its dying for its life.


End file.
